


a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull

by meglimeg



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Neil Hargrove Being an Asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:11:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meglimeg/pseuds/meglimeg
Summary: And Steve wonders, sometimes, how they actually came to be friends in the first place. Because Billy hadn’t apologised for months, but two weeks after the fight, they’d been lying out on the dirt by the quarry, passing a cigarette and a can of beer between them, sighing up at the night sky, and talking about monsters. Different kinds of monsters, sure. But monsters all the same.





	a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull

**Author's Note:**

> I've thrown myself head first into Harringrove and I have zero regrets. I kept playing this scene in my head (for some reason), and I couldn't really focus on anything else until I wrote it.
> 
> Fair warning: Neil is an abusive and homophobic piece of shit.
> 
> This is also unbetaed or even un-read through. I'm up way too late and I have work early. Please do point out any mistakes!
> 
> Title is from Bruce Springsteen's 'I'm On Fire'
> 
> I'm sorry for how many sentences I start with 'and'. My old English teachers are weeping.
> 
> I know this ship isn't everyone's thing - if it's not yours, feel free to move along. I'm just all about flawed characters getting some kind of redemption and something about these two pulls at me.

Billy is waiting by Steve’s locker when he arrives before first class, looking for the world like the sweetest wet dream imaginable. His white shirt is clinging tightly to his torso, his jeans are somehow tighter, and he’s leaning against the metal with the kind of ease that could only come from someone with Billy’s confidence. Steve can’t help but smile when he sees him.

Billy looks up when Steve comes closer, and the side of his mouth twitches, ever so slightly, because he’s happy to see Steve (he always is), but sometimes it’s best to be subtle.

It takes Steve a moment to realise that Billy’s actually leaning _against_ his locker, stopping him from getting to it, and he sighs, painting his face with mock annoyance.

“Hargrove,” he says, crossing his arms across his chest. “You’re in my way.”

Billy smirks, raising an eyebrow, pushing away from the locker so that he’s toe-to-toe with Steve. “That so, Harrington?” he asks, crossing his arms too. It’s all for show, and Steve is tempted to push further, to press harder, to start the day with the kind of mock fight that they break out every once in a while, when it looks like someone’s looking too closely at their friendship.

Because they’re friends, now, and everyone knows it. They eat lunch together and go to extra training together and go to the movies together and go to parties together, and it’s strange, sure. It’s been, what, five months since Billy almost killed him at the Byers’ house? Five months since Billy took years’ worth of frustration out on the person who’d been his only fixation for weeks, since Billy had woken up on a stranger’s floor feeling emptier than he had in nearly a decade.

And Steve wonders, sometimes, how they actually came to be friends in the first place. Because Billy hadn’t apologised for months, but two weeks after the fight, they’d been lying out on the dirt by the quarry, passing a cigarette and a can of beer between them, sighing up at the night sky, and talking about monsters. Different kinds of monsters, sure. But monsters all the same.

And it had started out like that, meeting late at night, drinking and talking, comparing nightmares and shitty parents, and wondering when the sun was going to rise. And then they started hanging out when the sun was up, at school, outside the arcade, gravitating towards each other like circling planets, that need to be closer tugging them nearer and nearer. No one else at the school knew how they’d sit together, trying not to cry, bracing themselves against the cold. Why would they want to sit with anyone else in the cafeteria? Why would they want to change next to someone who didn’t know how little they slept at night?

People noticed, but didn’t comment. Tommy said something to Billy, apparently, near the beginning, and Steve doesn’t know what he said, but it was enough to make Billy’s nostrils flare and his jaw clench, and Steve had to put a hand out to rest on his arm, out there in the dark under the trees, and he pressed his thumb into Billy’s soft skin, until Billy’s heartrate slowed and his chin dropped against his chest, defeated.

Steve doesn’t know how Billy reacted to Tommy, but it was enough to stop anyone else from saying anything.

Billy had apologised that night, two months after the fight, and it was January, and they should have been wearing coats, but the cold was punishing, and they both felt like they needed punishing.

Billy had raised his head, and looked at Steve, and reached out a hand and touched it to his cheek, and said, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

And Steve’s hand was still holding onto Billy’s arm, and he'd held tighter, and whispered, “It’s okay. I know it wasn’t about me.”

And Billy had nodded, sadly, and had swept his thumb across Steve’s cheekbone, and then there was really nothing else to do but to lean in, press his lips against Billy’s. And Steve had pulled back and furrowed his brow, looked at Billy’s surprisingly serene face, and had said, “Jesus. Your lips are so cold.”

And Billy had huffed out a breath, cool air curling between them, and said, “How about we get out of here?” his hand still cupping Steve’s face.

And that had been that.

Three months later, Steve regularly finds Billy leaning against his locker, or against his car after school, and sometimes people look at them, as if asking with their eyes, and so sometimes they fight, so that people don’t ask out loud, because anyone who was really paying attention would probably notice how often they lean towards each other.

But Steve doesn’t feel like fighting today, hasn’t been able to press himself against Billy in almost a week, kept away from him by after-school study hall and constant babysitting, and he can’t bring himself to be even remotely mean towards that stupidly pretty face.

So he says, “Yep,” popping the P, and nudging his way past Billy’s shoulder. He opens his locker and starts pulling out his books for the day, and Billy leans on his side against the next locker, lips curled and eyes dancing.

“So, Harrington,” he starts, voice low. “What are you up to this weekend?”

Steve shrugs, going for casual, pretending that Billy’s tone isn’t spiking his heart-rate or colouring his cheeks. “Got nothing planned,” he says, shutting his locker and resting his back against it. “Why? You have something in mind?”

Billy shrugs, glances around them, and the nearest person is fifty feet away, so he leans in, ever so slightly, and says quietly, “My dad and Susan are headed out of town this weekend, and Max is having a sleepover. Figured you could come over, drink some beer, maybe I could suck your brain out through your dick.”

And Steve’s cheeks get hotter and presumably redder, and he fights to keep his composure as he says, “Sounds good.”

Billy outright smiles, teeth and all, and says, “Saturday, 3?”

Steve nods, and their eyes meet, and there’s a moment where they’re still, where something passes between them. The bell rings, and Steve says, “See you at lunch?”

And Steve wonders how he ever coped without their easy relationship, without laughing together and curling together, and Nancy was lovely but she’s nothing like Billy. And Billy is hard where Nancy was soft, is rough where she was smooth, and yet Steve doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone who can be as gentle as Billy, as tender and as warm.

Billy says, “Yeah. Lunch.”

-

Steve’s never been to Billy’s house before, apart from picking up and dropping Max off sometimes. Billy is paranoid about his dad finding out about them, about Billy being gay, and so Steve will drop him off or pick him up from over a block away, always under cover of darkness, and Steve doesn’t ask about the bruises that litter Billy’s torso, or his black eyes, or his split lips, instead pressing kisses to each spot of pain and promising to take him away, someday, from the anger. They’re big promises, considering they’ve only been them for three months, and it scares Steve how much he means it all the same.

He wants Billy to tell him about what happens, wants more than just to gently ask, “Your dad?” and be met with downcast eyes and stony silence. He never presses.

He remembers the first time he figured it out, had spent the whole weekend with Billy in his empty house, his parents away for the hundredth time, and they ate pizza and kissed and touched each other under the covers, and Billy had gone straight home, and come into school the next day with a cut on his cheek and a bruise blooming around his eye, and Steve had dragged him under the bleachers and said, “Jesus, what happened?”

And, okay, Steve knew that Billy’s dad wasn’t a great guy, exactly, but parents hitting their kids never seemed to make sense to him. If a parent hit their kid, it meant they gave a shit, and that wasn’t something Steve had ever experienced.

Billy had mumbled something about getting into a fight, and Steve had sighed and rolled his eyes, and said, “When did you even have the chance to get into a fight? I thought you went straight home!”

And maybe he’d spoken too loudly, because Billy had flinched and pulled away slightly, and that shift in Billy’s stance had been enough for a notion to flash through Steve’s mind, an idea that he doesn’t want to believe but can’t quite shake, and an idea that actually makes sense, when he thinks about it.

He’d reached out, curled his fingers around Billy’s wrist, his grip loose, stepping forward and asking, voice low, “Was it your dad?” half hoping for a scoff and a denial, half hoping for the truth.

Neither had come, and Billy had pulled away and wrapped his arms around himself, walking away without looking over his shoulder.

And Billy had climbed in through his window that night, wordlessly crawling under the covers and pressing his face into Steve’s neck and breathing against him, and Steve had gathered him in his arms and it had been the closest thing to an admission that he could expect.

This is what Steve’s thinking about as he pulls into Billy’s drive and puts his car in park, more nervous than he should be. He’s three minutes early, and he waits for a minute and a half before climbing out and knocking on the door.

Billy answers quickly, as if he was waiting just inside, and the thought of Billy Hargrove being that eager to see Steve still makes something warm in his stomach.

When the door is closed, Steve leans in and presses his lips to Billy’s cheek. It’s cheesy and romantic, and Billy rolls his eyes every time he does it, but Steve knows that, while Billy has had his fair share of sexual partners, he’s never had anything quite like this. Never had someone to kiss his cheek before. And Steve’s going to keep kissing his cheek for as long as Billy will let him.

They chat easily about nothing in particular as they settle into the sofa cushions, leaning against each other with a beer in their hands, and Steve takes in the place that Billy calls home. (Billy isn’t sure he calls it home anymore. He doesn’t think he ever really called it home, has always thought of home as being drenched in California sun. Home might have changed for him, recently. It’s still sunny, but it’s more Indiana-based).

The home is dark and a much smaller than Steve’s, and Steve snorts at the poster of the bikini-clad woman on Billy’s wall. Billy rolls his eyes and says, “Gotta try to convince the old man somehow, right?” and he says it with a laugh, but Steve thinks he hears the subtext, thinks he hears what the consequences would be if he found out.

After a couple of hours of nothing in particular, they order takeout, and they kiss and Billy does good on his promise from the other day, right there on the couch, and Steve’s eyes roll back into his head as he threads his fingers through Billy’s curls and arches his back and whispers his name, eager and aching and so, _so_ desperate to be as close to Billy as possible.

When Billy pulls off, licking his lips and hair rough from his fingers, Steve climbs on top of him and grinds himself down against Billy, rocking and rocking until Billy’s clutching at Steve’s sides, fingers so tight Steve’s sure they’ll leave marks even through his shirt, and then Billy’s whining into Steve’s throat, and then into his mouth, and then they slump together and catch their breath, and Steve marvels at what it is to be next to Billy.

When they’ve cleaned themselves up and spent a few minutes just grinning, Billy turns to him and says, “Got a surprise for you,” before disappearing to his room, and Steve raises an eyebrow and waits patiently.

Billy comes back with a video case, and says, “I’m sick to death of you talking about this stupid film that you still haven’t seen, so I figured, if we watched it, you might finally shut up about it,” and he holds out a copy of _Footloose,_ and Steve beams and thinks to himself _‘I love this boy’._

He doesn’t say it out loud, just keeps grinning, and says, “You sure about that? You sure you’re not just crushing on Kevin Bacon?” and Billy rolls his eyes and shoves at Steve’s shoulder as he passes him to get to the video player. Billy’s bought popcorn as well, and while they’ve gone on dozens of things that he would call dates, this feels real. He’s in Billy’s house and he’s eating popcorn with him and watching _Footloose_ and falling asleep on his shoulder, and it feels so much like it’s normal that his heart skips a beat.

They both fall asleep during the film, waking up at 10pm, and Steve is lying on top of Billy, who’s snoring softly into his hair, and Steve grins, pokes Billy awake, and says, “Take me to bed?”

Neither of them are expecting sex, and they strip down to their underwear and climb under the covers, holding on to each other and ignoring the fact that neither of them have brushed their teeth, and it should be gross, but neither of them care to move away from the other.

And they fall asleep like that, and Steve thinks about how happy he is that they came into this, fell into it somehow, because he never sleeps better than when he’s sleeping next to Billy. The nightmares still come, but Billy soothes him through them and maybe it should make him feel weak, but it only ever makes him feel safe.

He falls asleep with his head on Billy’s chest, lulled by the strong rhythm of his heartbeat.

-

Steve startles awake as Billy’s door is thrown open, and Billy sleeps more deeply than Steve, because he shuffles slightly, but doesn’t open his eyes, and so Steve is caught, sat bolt upright in bed, naked from the waist up, staring at the furious glare of Neil Hargrove.

He’s standing in the doorway, fists balled at his sides, murderous eyes taking in the scene in front of him, and Steve’s frozen. Billy’s arm had been resting around his waist, and it’s fallen as Steve had sat up, pressing slightly against his crotch, and there’s no way Neil can’t see that, no way he can’t see the hickey on Steve’s pec, or Billy’s kiss-swollen lips, and Steve feels like he’s going to die in the next ten minutes.

He swallows, and Neil isn’t moving, so he thinks the best thing he can do is give Billy the chance at a fair fight. He shakes Billy’s shoulder, and it takes a few shakes for him to stir, and Steve can’t take his eyes away from Neil, because he doesn’t want to be caught off-guard by a sudden attack.

Billy’s face is turned slightly away from the door, so he opens his eyes and sees Steve, and mumbles, “Stevie? Nightmare?”

Neil says “Billy,” and Steve has never seen Billy move so fast in his life. He pulls away from Steve like he’s been electrocuted by him, and after that, Steve’s not sure what happens.

He knows that Neil’s hurting Billy, that he’s punching him and pushing him against the wall, and he’s spitting horrible things into his face, and Billy drops to the floor and he’s getting kicked in the stomach, and Steve thinks he hears Billy groan something like “run”, but he’s not entirely sure if that’s even possible, given the relentless pace Neil’s set.

Steve wants to run, but not without Billy, so as soon as his mind stops freaking out about what’s happening he’s out of bed and pulling on jeans, grabbing clothes that he thinks are his and Billy’s and then he steps up behind Neil and tries to pull him away from Billy.

Because Billy’s not fighting back. And Steve’s going to fight back for him.

Neil has no issue punching Steve, apparently, and Steve isn’t weak, but Neil is relentless, and in a few moments, he’s pinned against the wall with a hand around his neck, and Neil is leaning in, breath foul, and spitting, “You been touching my fag son? You fag?”

He’s pressing hard, and Steve’s panicking, and there’s spots starting to fade in his vision, and he tries to see Billy but he doesn’t know where, and he hopes, vaguely, that Billy’s managed to escape. That maybe something good will come of this.

He’s losing the fight against Neil, and his body’s starting to go weak, and then Neil’s gone, and Billy’s the one who’s pulled him away, punching at his face with a kind of anger that Steve recognises, but had hoped never to see again.

Neil seems too stunned that Billy’s fighting back for once that it looks like he’s just taking it, and then he’s falling backwards and dropping to the floor, and Steve takes his chance and grabs the clothes from the bed and grabs Billy’s hand, pulling him to the door before Neil can get back up.

He thinks he sees Max’s mom in the hallway, cheeks wet with tears, but he pushes on and they run out to the car, and Steve roots through his jeans for his keys. Neither of them have their shoes. That’ll be okay. Steve and Billy are the same size, and Steve has plenty at his house.

He pushes Billy into the passenger seat and climbs into the driver’s side, pulling out of the drive and down the street with the kind of speed normally only attempted by Billy.

-

It’s not a long drive to Steve’s house, which is still standing empty, and when he reaches the drive and parks up, he takes a few moments to catch his breath, before looking over at Billy.

He’s staring straight ahead, looking at Steve’s house with eyes that Steve knows aren’t seeing. And he should look ridiculous, sat there in his underwear with a bundle of clothes on his lap, but Steve looks at the bruises and the blood and his stomach turns. He reaches across to him, hand resting gently on his knee.

He wants to ask, ‘You okay?’ but knows that he isn’t. He says, “C’mon, let’s go in,” and if Billy hears, he doesn’t show it.

Steve gets out of the car and goes to Billy’s door, reaching in and pulling him out. Billy follows like a rag doll, and they reach the house with slow steps, arms looped around each other.

When they reach the living room, Billy pulls on the clothes that Steve had grabbed, before collapsing onto the couch, and Steve goes to get some frozen peas to put everywhere, apparently.

He sits down next to him, and asks, “Where does it hurt the most?” and Billy squeezes his eyes shut, before lifting his hand. Steve takes it gently, and Billy winces and hisses, and actually cries out in pain when the peas press against it.

It’s so so swollen, and Steve knows without knowing that it’s broken. “Bill,” he says, loosely holding onto his hand, “I think we should go to the hospital. I think this could be broken.”

Billy shakes his head immediately. “Got no insurance. No hospitals.”

And Steve says, “We’ll put you on my parents’ insurance. We’ll tell them you’re me. They won’t know.” He stands and tries to stand Billy up to, and it’s a testament to how shaken Billy is that he just follows, padding to the door where they both put on sneakers that are waiting there. And maybe they should be talking. They’re not, though.

-

They x-ray Billy’s hand and don’t ask any difficult questions, and then they slather it in a cast and there’s about half an hour where they’re alone in the room while it sets and the nurse sorts out paperwork.

Steve steps up to where Billy’s sat on the bed, and rests his forehead against Billy’s, and they rest like that for a moment, just leaning against each other.

He isn’t expecting Billy to say anything, but he hears him take a breath. “I’m sorry,” is what he says, and it’s the last thing Steve would expect.

He pulls back slightly, looks into Billy’s eyes, says, “I’m the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have come over.”

And Billy’s shaking his head, definite, vehement, eyes brimming. “He hurt _you._ He shouldn’t have done that, not _you-_ “ and Steve reaches out and draws him into his arms.

“I’m okay,” he says, pressing his cheek to Billy’s head. “I’m here. And you’re okay. We’re okay.”

Billy’s arms wind around Steve’s waist, and they stay like that for minutes or maybe hours, and Steve says, “You can stay with me. Forever. My parents won’t care, and then – then when I graduate I’ll get my own place and you can live with me there. And you won’t ever have to go back and I won’t let him hurt you again.” And the words are pretty mumbled against Billy’s soft hair, but he’s shaking with how much he means them, and Billy’s not pulling away or saying no like Steve half expects him to. He pulls Steve closer, and it feels like as much of an agreement as he’s going to get.

He feels Billy mumble into his neck, and even though he can’t quite hear the words, somehow, he can feel them. He pulls back slightly, and kisses Billy’s bruised lips, and says, “Yeah. I love you too.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments would be lovely.
> 
> I'm so in love with this ridiculous pairing that I may well continue if there's any interest.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> (edited on 3rd of Jan to change a couple of small errors)


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